Non-remunerative allowances and procedure prior the dismissals of an employee without a justified cause are the two subjects introduced by the Decree N° 1043/2018 published in the Official Gazette on November 13, 2018.

NON-REMUNERATIVE ALLOWANCES

It is established through this decree a non-remunerative allowance from the 1st of November for all employees under employment relationship of the private sector. This allowance is about AR$5,000 (five thousand argentine pesos), the payment must be performed in the following way:

AR$2,500 with the salary of November of 2018 to be paid in December of 2018 and;

AR$2,500 jointly with the salary of January of 2018 to be paid in February of 2018.

Workers will perceive the allocation proportionally when the provision of services is less than the legal or conventional working hours.

Those activities or sectors that are in crisis or productive decline will be able to adapt the implementation of the provisions of this decree in matters of terms and amounts.

Collective bargaining agreements that would have agreed an increase over the income of the workers during the collective negotiation of 2018 may compensate that increase. This compensation must be with the total sum of the allocation up to its concurrence except that they expressly agree not to absorb them.

In addition, they may request to compute the allocation on account of the sums that agree to review salary corresponding to collective bargaining of the year 2018.

Employers who had unilaterally granted salary increases over the workers’ incomes after January 1st of 2018, may compensate them until its concurrence with the total sum of the allocation, but it will acquire remunerative nature.

Workers from the public sector (national, provincial and municipal) are excluded regardless of their type of relationship or the applicable labor regime.

The workers of the Agrarian Labor Regime and the special regime of contract for the Personnel of Private Houses are also excluded from this decree, without prejudice to what the competent bodies may establish.

The personnel of the Construction Industry are excepted from this decree.

PRIOR COMMUNICATION PROCEDURE FOR DISMISSALS WITHOUT JUSTICE CAUSE.

This decree establishes until March 31 of 2019 a procedure by which employers before arranging dismissals of workers without justified cause they must communicate the decision to the Ministry of production and work with no less of anticipation than TEN (10) business days prior to making it effective.

The Ministry of Production and Labor may ex officio or at the request of a party convene the employer and the worker together with the relevant trade union assistance in order to hold the hearings within TEN (10) business days. The hearings will be as many as the Ministry deems necessary to consider the conditions in which the future labor termination will take place.

The breach of the provisions of this chapter will result in the application of the penalties provided for in the Labor Pact Law. The penalties may range from minor serious to very serious.